For Lori Wagner and Ian Wagner <br /> <br /> <br /> <br />1. <br />From the sea, the sun ascended like angels, <br />its heat sweeping up in bursts of movement, <br />its tense corona: hot matters to be settled. <br /> <br />I could live in huts of pictures, huts of thoughts. <br />I could speak as if the ocean had anecdotes. <br />When silence comes, it's held like grains of sand. <br /> <br />I chased down freshness before I knew what it was. <br />There, on 6th and Boardwalk, was a salty birth; <br />all sand, all spray, all air and remembrance. <br /> <br />2. <br />It was not half bad in that seaside trailer, <br />that taciturn dwelling, narrow, but lovely with <br />the thought of a peace - a particular peace. <br /> <br />Your brother died before the ocean knew him, <br />before, from that trailer, he could consider his life, <br />and before tall whimbrels cried over groveling waves - <br />He bought that future; never lived it. Died on cold sand. <br /> <br />Why is there a haunting? Why do specters <br />sit in the fullness of mists, their afterlives <br />tied to the former life of dwellers and thinkers, <br />bent on receiving elusive explanations? <br />He clung to me and I never knew him, <br />which is the strangest visitation of all, <br />the inexplicable shadow, moving slow. <br />In all the seas, there are inexplicable faces, <br />in all the houses loving the shore, there is confession. <br /> <br />3. <br />The water washes in memories, even <br />the ones that crash through calm sanity, <br />even when coastal city streets prepare for doom - <br />an image of a stranger sings as hard as cymbals. <br /> <br />Air is distorted. Shops are mute as seaweed. <br />Many are dead; many have never lived. <br />Among the new ghosts, one cries the deepest.<br /><br />Lamont Palmer<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/departures-4/
